This disclosure relates generally to presenting content in an online system, and more specifically to pacing of a budget by a user for presenting sponsored content to other users via an online system.
Online systems, such as social networking systems, allow users to connect to and to communicate with other users of the online system. Users may create profiles on an online system that are tied to their identities and include information about the users, such as interests and demographic information. The users may be individuals or entities such as corporations or charities. Online systems allow users to easily communicate and to share content with other online system users by providing content to an online system for presentation to other users. Content provided to an online system by a user may be declarative information provided by a user, status updates, check-ins to locations, images, photographs, videos, text data, or any other information a user wishes to share with additional users of the online system. An online system may also generate content for presentation to a user, such as content describing actions taken by other users on the online system.
Additionally, many online systems commonly allow users (e.g., businesses) to sponsor presentation of content on an online system to gain public attention for a user's products or services or to persuade other users to take an action regarding the user's products or services. Content for which the online system receives compensation in exchange for presenting to users is referred to as “sponsored content.” Many online systems receive compensation from a user for presenting online system users with certain types of sponsored content provided by the user. Frequently, online systems charge a user for each presentation of sponsored content to an online system user or for each interaction with sponsored content by an online system user. For example, an online system receives compensation from an entity each time a content item provided by the user is displayed to another user on the online system or each time another user is presented with a content item on the online system and interacts with the content item (e.g., selects a link included in the content item), or each time another user performs another action after being presented with the content item (e.g., visits a physical location associated with the user who provided the content item).
When providing sponsored content items to an online system for presentation to users of the online system, a user may provide parameters for limiting presentation of the sponsored content items by the online system. For example, a user specifies a time limit and a budget for the online system to present sponsored content items provided by the user to other users. When the time limit expires, the online system stops presenting the sponsored content items from the user, even if the budget is not exhausted. Similarly, when the budget is exhausted, the online system stops presenting the sponsored content items from the user to other users, even if the time limit specified by the user has not expired. Hence, the advertising campaign may be presented to users either until the budget is exhausted or the time limit expires. Additionally, the user may specify frequency limits for various sponsored content items along with the time limit, with a frequency limit for a sponsored content item specifying a maximum number of times the sponsored content item is presented to another user during the time limit.
However, pacing presentation of sponsored content items received from a user over a time limit specified by the user allows the sponsored content items to be presented to other users for the full duration of the time limit. Because conventional methods for selecting sponsored content for presentation by an online system identify sponsored content items eligible for presentation to another user and determine whether to present the identified sponsored content items, fluctuations in the number of online system users eligible to be presented with sponsored content items provided by a user may affect how rapidly a budget of the advertising campaign is exhausted. Similarly, fluctuations in a number of opportunities to present sponsored content items to a particular online system user affects how rapidly presentation of a sponsored content item from the user to the particular online system user reaches the frequency limit for the sponsored content item. As prediction of the number of opportunities to present sponsored content items to various online system users is difficult to accurately predict before the opportunities are identified and an amount a user is willing to compensate the online system for presenting sponsored content items to other online system users may vary over time, conventional methods for selecting sponsored content items by an online system limit a user's ability to regulate frequencies with which sponsored content items are presented to other users throughout a time interval.